The gunman who massacred 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 was sentenced on Wednesday to death, a federal-court decision that came nearly five years after the highest-casualty antisemitic attack in the nation’s history.
A 12-person federal jury reached its unanimous decision for Robert G. Bowers, 50, of Baldwin, Pa., after a tw0-month trial in which anguished survivors described the mass shooting on Oct. 27, 2018, in terrifying detail.
In addition to killinga total of 11 members of all three congregations that shared the synagogue, Tree of Life, Dor Hadash and New Light, Bowers wounded two other congregants and several police officers.
“Each death is enough on its own. The weight of all that loss is more than enough,” Eric Olshan, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, said in his closing statement Monday. “The defendant was proud he carried out the worst mass shooting against Jews in U.S. history. Weigh it, and when you’re done, impose the only punishment that is sufficient under our law: A sentence of death.”
Prosecutors said during the trial the gunman planned to kill as many Jewish people as possible and was motivated by a deep-seated antisemitism. Bowers’s defense team did not dispute that he carried out the crimes, but said he suffered from mental illness and had a troubled personal history that made it difficult for him to think rationally.
Jurors had convicted Bowers in mid-June on 63 hate-crime and gun-related counts. In capital cases, juries are required to deliver a separate verdict after additional testimony in a penalty phase of the trial. The Pittsburgh jury deliberated for more than nine hours over two days before reaching a unanimous decision, as required for a death sentence in a federal case.
District Judge Robert J. Colville will hold a formal sentencing hearing for Bowers on Thursday, court officials said.
The verdict offered a measure of justice for the victims’ families, survivors and others throughout the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, where the synagogue has remained closed since the attack.
Family members and Jewish leaders were present each day of the trial at the Joseph F. Weis Jr. federal courthouse. Many of them testified about the devastation Bowers caused and the loved ones whose lives were cut short. Bowers sat next to his lawyers each day of the trial but he did not testify.
Those killed were: Rose Mallinger, 97; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; brothers David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Dan Stein, 71; Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Joyce Fienberg, 75; Melvin Wax, 87; Irving Younger, 69; and Richard Gottfried, 65. Those who survived being shot included Dan Leger and Andrea Wedner, Mallinger’s daughter.
Bowers was shot as police apprehended him after a shootout in a classroom on the third floor of the synagogue.
During closing arguments Monday, prosecutors showed gruesome crime scene photos of the victims lying in pools of blood in the synagogue, juxtaposing those images with other photos of the victims in moments of joy, during their weddings or playing with their children and grandchildren.
Bowers’s attorneys presented testimony from neurologists who said he showed signs of mental illness.
Bowers was committed to a psychiatric facility as a youth after trying to harm himself, including overdosing on pain relievers. His attorneys said in court that his father committed suicide, his mother was emotionally abusive, and Bowers struggled to overcome a difficult childhood. He bounced from one job to another as an adult and ultimately embraced hateful conspiracy theories about Jews and immigrants, his attorneys said.
Bowers “didn’t know safety as a baby, he didn’t know safety as a toddler, he didn’t know safety as a teenager,” defense attorney Judy Clarke told jurors in her closing argument. “He was mentally ill as a child … and he ultimately descended into serious mental illness as an adult and committed serious crimes. What a tragedy that was. But is that who we kill?”
Prosecutors discounted suggestions that Bowers suffered from schizophrenia and epilepsy, saying he has not been medicated during his time in federal custody and has not suffered psychotic episodes or seizures.
They presented evidence that he was an active user of the Gab social media site, where he liked and reposted hundreds of antisemitic memes, including about the Holocaust. Bowers told officials after the shooting that he considered putting two victims killed in a kitchen into the oven, prosecutors said.
“This defendant is 50 years old. He’s an adult and he committed horrific murders when he was 46. He’s not an impressionable teen,” federal prosecutor Troy Rivetti told jurors. He emphasized that Bowers has showed no remorse for his crimes. “The defendant does not have schizophrenia. You know what’s inside his mind — it’s filled with hate and common white supremacist and antisemitic tropes.”
Bowers joins 40 others on federal death row. An execution date remained undetermined. His lawyers are expected to file appeals that could take years to resolve.
He became the first person condemned to death by a federal jury since 2019, and the first under Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has taken steps to reduce capital punishment prosecutions and shortly after taking office in 2021placed a moratorium on federal executions.
Garland said the Justice Department is reviewing changes made to federal death penalty procedures during the Trump administration, which executed 13 inmates in the final seven months of Donald Trump’s presidency.
The Justice Department filed capital charges against Bowers in 2019, during the Trump administration, and federal prosecutors affirmed the decision after reviewing the case when Garland took office two years later, people involved in the process said.
